Why phobias can get in the way

Phobias can prevent us from doing many things, as our brain teaches us to avoid things that at some point in our lives have made us scared, it is a learned response and we are programmed to respond in this way if there has been a past event that has triggered the fight/flight response.

The brain is so very clever in helping us keep safe as it evolved to prevent us from putting ourselves in danger. This is very helpful if the danger is life threatening but not so helpful if the linked fear is of driving on a motorway or having an injection to keep us well.

Phobias are caused by an early and significant memory being stored in the Hippocampus as at the time of the event there was heightened fear and possibly other emotions. Maybe this was having an injection as a child that was traumatic and so the brain stores this as a template so that whenever there is another experience that is similar, a message gets sent that a survival response is needed. Your body is flooded with adrenaline and this gets you ready to fight or flight. You then avoid anything that even slightly reminds you of this experience and the brain learns that avoidance is what is keeping you safe, and so avoid is what you do.

If this is a fear of spiders then maybe you have adapted to manage this fear by always getting someone else to get rid of them, but maybe it is a fear that starts to get in the way of life such as avoiding driving on the motorway or flying to go on your honeymoon.

The good news is that there are ways to remove this template that the Hippocampus is keeping hold of. Hypnotherapy is a very efficient and effective way of removing this template through a process called ‘rewind’. By using hypnosis the client is in a relaxed state whilst then visualising themselves sat in a safe comfortable place watching a tv screen where the significant event is played out. The client does not experience the full emotion of the memory due to being one step removed and watching themselves whilst in a very relaxed state. The client is then asked to fast forward and rewind the scene many times until the brain gets ‘bored’ of this memory and learns that there is no longer fear attached and moves it to a narrative memory.

Part 2 of this process is that the therapist and client then work together to form a new memory, imagining how the client would like the future event to go. The brain does not know the difference between imaginary and reality and so a new scene is created through hypnosis that the brain then recognises as a positive memory. So when the client is exposed to the future event the fear response is no longer triggered in the same way and the client is not encouraged to avoid any longer.

Phobias and fears can rule us and it is reassuring to know there is a way to get control back!